In the current decade, new insights in the interaction between tumors and the immune system have led to the development of immunotherapy as a fundamentally new concept for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. This type of cancer is a promising target for the next generation of immune-based strategies. The goal of immunotherapy in lung cancer is to induce or re-induce a cell-mediated immune response, mainly of T-cells that can selectively destroy cells that display tumor-associated antigens. Modern non-small cell lung cancer vaccine strategies rely on better identification of antigenic targets, the addition of strong immunoadjuvants, and use of more efficient delivery systems. These treatments have convincingly demonstrated to elicit potent immune responses and have shown promising efficacy signals and excellent tolerability in phase II randomized studies. This review examines the most promising active immunotherapy using protein or peptide vaccines, whole-cell vaccines, and dendritic cell vaccines and examines current phase I, II, and III clinical trial data on some novel immune checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-programmed death 1.